7. Nobel-winning author Yasunari Kawabata wrote about the "master" of this ancient game. The objective: capture your opponent's pieces by surrounding them. What is this ancient Chinese board game?
From Quiz Get Off My Property!
Answer:
Go
It's unknown when the board game "Go" originated, but it was first mentioned in historical texts dating back to the sixth century BCE, in Confucian annals from the Zhou Dynasty. The legend goes that Emperor Yao needed to control his unruly son, so he invented a mental game which required strategy and focus. From there, Go, or Weiqi in China, spread to Japan and Korea, and it's mentioned in Heian Japanese literary works like "The Tale of Genji" and "The Pillow Book". It took a bit longer to make it to the West, though, not even entering European awareness until the 1700s, and not becoming even close to popular until the twentieth century.
The rules of the game are straightforward, but strategy is complex. One person plays black pieces, another white, on a board where the intersection of grid lines are available spots to play. A playing piece (or "stone") is removed from the board if there are no available "liberties." A liberty is an adjacent unoccupied spot to a chain of stones, all of the same color. Essentially, if a group of pieces of all the same color is surrounded, then they are all removed. The game ends when there are no more places left for valid moves, or both players pass; in that situation, the winner is either the player who controls more area on the board, or the player who has surrounded the most unplayable territory.